It’s clear that the main attractions for Redwood Shores, Calif.–based Oracle Corp. in its proposed US $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems are Sun’s software assets—Java and the Solaris operating system. But a bit of hardware might turn out to be a hidden gem in the deal. Some industry insiders say that the database giant has an opportunity to get ahead of competitors by pioneering the technology behind Sun’s Rock CPU, which is scheduled for release later this year.